By: Olivia Arnold

After a well-deserved winter break, students struggle to come back to school, suffocating from the stress and pressure of the dreaded midterm.

At Westborough High School, two standardized tests are presented to students: the midterm and the final. The midterm contains material from the first two quarters of the school year while the final exam contains material from the last two quarters.  Unlike the final, the midterm takes place in the middle of January and students cannot be exempt, even with a grade of 89.5 or higher. The only exception is for half year electives.

With this, the question arises, why can we get exempt from the final exams but not the midterms?

By allowing exemptions for finals, students don’t tend to take the first two quarters seriously since they have nothing to strive for other than a good grade, which isn’t a large enough motivator for many. Due to the lack of interest and hard work, students will not retain the information being presented well. If midterm exam exemptions for full year classes’ were available, students would listen, retain, and study the information from their classes due to having a goal of getting an exemption form.

Even if one does not have a high enough grade for an exemption, their stress level, when time for the exam, will be significantly lower due to the focus on the information presented through the first half of the school year.

Any major exams leave students scrambling and cramming the last few study days. Taking place after a long break, the midterm exams add even more stress on teenagers than they already have. The American Physiological Association conducted a 2013 study among high school students finding that “eighty-three percent report that school is a somewhat or significant source of stress, and 10 percent of teens report receiving lower grades than they are capable of because of stress.” Not only does the midterm result in an absurd amount of stress due to the lack of exemptions, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect students’ knowledge, many times lowering their grade.

So why put added stress to those students who’ve stressed about their grades from the beginning of the year? Don’t they deserve to be excused from a major test when they’ve proven their knowledge and hard work already?

Allow exemptions for midterm exams in Westborough High School.